Recently I saw an advertising slogan on the side of a van. I have no idea which company it was advertising but it went something like this: "Service is our passion. People are our strength."
And I immediately thought, "That's the perfect slogan for the followers of Jesus!" Service, servant hood and people - that's how we can effectively communicate directly into the heart of our rapidly changing world.
Following the Jesus Way is to live out our theology, not just as a cerebral exercise but also as Kingdom activity that is both life changing and life enhancing. As such, I suggest that as Followers of the Way our journey with God is both inwardly theological and outwardly political to live God’s Kingdom and to protect God’s Creation in the here and now.
In this context there is one passage of Scripture that motivates my ministry more than any other and it is the set Lectionary reading for today, Matthew chapter 25 vv 31 – 46. In my opinion, this passage of the Christian Testament should be the Anthem of the Church.
It is what has been proclaimed in one way or another in the events in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London over recent weeks where the tented 'city' of those opposed to capitalism, so called 'fat cat' bankers and reckless use of earth's natural resources has brought resignations of clergy over the attitude of the Church authorities towards the protestors. And the question of many of those protestors has been asked but not yet answered: "Is the Church today following the teaching and life style of Jesus or is the Church siding with the powers that be?"
When the Gospel of Matthew was written, the writer was also struggling with the same question: "Should our Church [i.e. the Matthew community] be counter cultural or should it side with the powers that be?"
This question was not addressing the entire church around the Mediterranean and Middle East of that time but was directed primarily at the followers of Matthew’s teaching, encouraging them to support one another within the fellowship and also to support and welcome those who were on the edge of the group as a way of encouraging them into the fellowship. It was counter-cultural, on the edge and empowered by love and servant hood.
But we need to be aware that the events recorded in the Gospel of Matthew may not have happened exactly as they are written. We also need to be aware of the historical context of its writing some 60 years after the events are supposed to have happened.
Matthew sets our Lectionary passage within the Hebrew understanding of eschatological events - the end of time events. The end time passage starts at the beginning of Matthew ch. 24 and runs through to the end of Matthew ch. 25. It is the passage within Matthew’s Gospel that considers the destruction of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem as a precursor to the end of time when God will come in power to judge and to separate the righteous from the unrighteous. But this early expectation was wrong - the Temple had been destroyed but Jesus had not come back.
However, this end time understanding of Matthew is irrelevant to many people today, except, perhaps, for the fundamentalist Christians who take the Bible as the literal truth. In my opinion, a very different interpretation is needed for this passage to both reflect the nature of the God that I experience, and to make sense to the majority of people today.
But in the context of its writing, Matthew, the Jewish follower of Jesus the reforming Jew, was steeped in this teaching of the events at the end of time and the writer of Matthew’s Gospel expected that Jesus would return very soon to come as the Judge to reward the righteous and to punish the wicked. Matthew got this wrong.
Here is Jewish history summed up in a theology of God’s rewards and punishments. For all those who had, down the millennia, attacked God’s chosen people as the Jews saw themselves, God would cast their enemies into the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, into the fires of hell - but for the Chosen people, no matter how hard life had been for them on earth during times of defeat and captivity and exile and slavery, God had already prepared a place in paradise for them.
But Matthew’s account is not the original New Testament account of the teachings about the end times because, by some 2 decades or so, Mark’s Gospel got there first and in Mark’s Gospel ch. 13 there is his account of the end times. In Mark 13 there is the destruction of the Temple and then terrible warnings about families being torn apart and dreadful things that will happen to pregnant women and babes and after these events, the Son of Man – Jesus - will appear in great power and His angels will come to gather the chosen from the earth.
And the chapter ends with the warning that no one knows when all this will happen… so be ready! Note that Mark also got this wrong.
Then, some 20 years after Mark’s account was written Matthew, the most Jewish of the canonical Gospel writers, took Mark’s account in Ch. 13 and expanded it by at least 60% to put his own Jewish slant upon the story. Careful reading of these different accounts reveals important contradictions between them.
And Matthew’s account then goes beyond the Mark emphasis upon the fate of the Temple and pushes the story into a consideration of the Final Judgement when God will separate the sheep and the goats, the righteous from the unrighteous, those who sided with the Roman oppressors and those who stood against them, and Matthew develops the set of woes that are associated with Jewish stories of what will happen at the end of time.
It should be remembered that none of the early Christian communities at the time when Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were writing their Gospels had a final understanding of who or what Jesus was - they were all developing their own understandings and variations on the meaning of the life of Jesus.
And here we have Matthew beginning to link Jesus of Nazareth with the long expected Jewish Messiah of the Hebrew Scriptures. That’s one reason why Matthew added the Virgin Birth story and the post-resurrection stories to the earlier Gospel of Mark where there are no similar stories, to demonstrate that in his developing understanding of the person of Jesus, here was God incarnate who needed to have God as his Father rather than an earthly father like the rest of us.
And Matthew has a particular warning for the followers of Jesus: 'be careful of false prophets who will come from rival Christian communities at the end time to steal away the faithful followers of the teaching of Matthew.'
In Mathew's end time story we read of dire warnings attributed to Jesus: the lesson of the fig tree, the unknown day and hour, the parable of the faithful and unfaithful servants, the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the parable of the talents, and then comes the Lectionary reading for today, the Final Judgement in Matthew 25 vv 31 – 46.
This passage in Matthew 25 is unique to Matthew, and, in my opinion it is Matthew’s own developing theology. These words attributed to Jesus do not appear in the other Gospels and if Jesus really had spoken these words, surely they would have appeared in the other Gospels? But even if these words are Matthew’s and not those of Jesus, it does not change my commitment to Matthew 25 vv 31 – 46 as a springboard for my ministry because I am sure that they reflect the concerns of the historical Jesus for others.
Also, they sum up the Gospel stories of the experiences of some of the early Christians following Pentecost when they surrendered all their possessions to their own local Christian community for the common good. They also gave willingly and extravagantly to deprived Christian communities elsewhere, taking up collections and sending gifts to those suffering Christian communities.
In my opinion, Matthew 25 is first and foremost about Christian love and servant hood. It is not about judgement in which the righteous will be blessed with eternal rewards and the unrighteous will be condemned with eternal punishment and damnation.
Too many people in this world are living in hell right now and do not need to wait for a heaven or hell beyond the grave. Part of the mystery of that which we call 'God' is that sacred love is for all people equally and without favour. However, it is because the lifestyle of too many of us in the rich world exploits too many people in the poor world that we condemn them to remain in the hell of poverty, of lack of education, of dirty drinking water, of HIV/AIDs and so on here and now.
And Christmas time is when we will see this great divide between those who have and those who have not being widened further than ever. This passage in Matthew 25 speaks clearly to me that it is my ethical duty and Christian responsibility to support and help all who are in genuine need. But here I stress: those who are in genuine need. Often the dilemma is in trying to sort out the genuine calls for help from those that are merely exploiting our Matthew 25 obligations.
So in conclusion, and based upon my own experience of the God revealed to us in perfect love I reject the concept of the final judgement as stated by the writer of Matthew's Gospel. He was working within the Hebrew apocalyptic theology of the time, but I accept that if we fail to support or if we ignore those in genuine need then we fail to support Jesus and we are actually rejecting Jesus. To do nothing in favour of the poor and genuine needy is to side with the status quo - to do nothing is a decision against Jesus.
However, I wholeheartedly agree that if we give support and help to those in genuine need then we are actually supporting and helping Jesus. And that is where my theology, my choices of how I spend my money this Christmas and my political actions all come together - and that is why Matthew 25, vv 31 – 46 still drives my ministry and my Christian life.
This Gospel lectionary today is not so much about final judgement but about compassion and justice here and now. Matthew's Jesus said, "As you do it to the least you do it me."